Shutterstock
As Florida’s governor made news last week by signing legislation to scrap common core educational standards in the state, it was a move welcomed by many parents.
They had long complained about the common core system, and it’s a move that could begin to replicate throughout the country.
Parents have been voicing their frustration with common core going back a decade, and it has caused a nationwide stir.
A state-led effort to develop the Common Core State Standards was launched in 2009, with many members of the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and the Council of Chief State School Officers putting their support behind it.
While everyone thought they were doing something good by creating a consistent and standardized learning environment across the country, the problem was the system itself. In actuality, the idea looked better on paper than it turned out to be in reality.
Common core is an aggressive style of learning, and it’s one that actually makes it difficult for the teachers to spend extra time on certain subjects, or even have the time to circle back to those students who are having trouble once the majority of the class has retained the subjects – the teacher needs to move on.
Add to that, the burden of the No Child Left Behind legislation.
All of this puts the teachers themselves in a difficult situation because as it is, most teachers deal with crowded classrooms and not enough time to teach everything to every one of their students. This puts both teachers and students in an untenable situation, where it is simultaneously difficult to properly educate and learn.
Another major factor is that common core uses a new-fangled approach to math that is completely foreign to most parents. Regardless of the fact that these parents may have excelled at math during their own schooling, they are lost trying to help their children with their math homework.
It has taken a decade, but politicians are beginning to listen to their constituents about the problems that common core has brought to the education system.
The move to end the program in Florida is a decisive step that is likely to resonate with politicians and state legislators throughout the country.
And at the federal level, U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos has effectively said common core is dead with the Department of Education.
